Saturday, 5 January 2013

On This Day in London History January 5

Two burials today. Two burials that bookend
an extraordinary period in London life. Bookend it in more ways than one.

On January 5, 1716 the Restoration
playwright William Wycherley is buried in the vault of St. Paul's Covent
Garden, the "actors' church". He'd died on January 1, in Bow Street.

Now about those "bookends".
Wycherley's greatest play, The Country Wife, is a crystallisation of
Restoration A-Listers' life and times. Let alone their "morality".
Brilliant, brittle, brazen, breathtakingly hedonistic, cynical...well, you get
the idea. This isn't the place to school you in any of these matters but if
you'd like a hint just think about the name of the play itself: The Country
Wife. And that of the main male character: Jack Horner. Say 'em a couple of
times. Your ear will "get it".

The other January 5 burial comes a
generation and change earlier: in 1676. Praisegod Barbon – I"m not making
that name up – is buried in the parish of St. Andrew Holborn. Buried near the
artillery ground. Praisegod "Barebones" (as his detractors called him;
one can readily imagine Wycherley's circle sneering at him in precisely that
vein) was a lay preacher, a politician, and a leather seller. That he was
severe, devout, probably slightly mad – in every essence a Puritan – almost
goes without saying.

What really interests me, though, is the
location of Barbon's "premises", the Lock and Key. It was at the far
end of Fleet Street, near Fetter Lane. It was, in other words, well outside the
wall, right on the edge of London. As far away as you could get from London's
big shots and still be in the same city. In short, half-a-mile away from the
London "establishment" – the comfortable, cosseted,
prosperous-in-the-extreme merchants in the centre of town. A half-a-mile away
that was also a world away.

But there, on the western edge of the City
also meant it was on the eastern edge (and change) of Westminster. As far away
as you could get from the court (and the London of Wycherley's world) and still
be in the same "urban space".

Not only does that geographical position
underline the sense of alienation – let alone biblical rage – that Praisegod
Barbon and his ilk must have felt, it will have fed it.

The Fetter Lane-Fleet Street
"nexus" is one of those extraordinary London "nodes" that
seems to give rise to "meaning." You can sense that it's there,
almost like a kernel in a nut. It gives rise to "meaning" because of
its "associations". It's there on the western edge of London. It was
an execution site. It was from there that Gulliver set out on his travels.
Indeed, in a sense it's "from there" that English Literature's
star-crossed 20th century couple, Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, set out on their
"travels", let alone their travails.

We walked across London to Fetter Lane

And your hotel. Opposite the entrance

On a bombsite becoming a building site

We clutched each other giddily

For safety and went in a barrel together

Over some Niagara. Falling

In the roar of soul your scar told me -

Like its secret name or its password -

How you had tried to kill yourself. And I
heard

Without ceasing for a moment to kiss you

As if a sober star had whispered it

Above the revolving, rumbling city: stay
clear.

A poltroon of a star. I cannot remember

How I smuggled myself, wrapped in you,

Into the hotel. There we were

You were slim and lithe and smooth as a
fish.

You were a new world. My new world.

So this is America. I marvelled.

Beautiful, beautiful America!

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